You know that most students aren't computer science majors?

Have you met the average community college student who doesn't even own a laptop but does all of their work on their phone? Gmail doesn't even allow you to create or manage filters from their phone app or mobile web interface.

Most of my students, across all disciplines, don't have basic competence in Word or GDocs, software they've been using for years. It's weeks to teach them how to appy headings

Most graduates aren't really qualified to work anywhere that they couldn't have worked before going to college in the first place.

This is a brilliant reply. I shook my head at the original and laughed hard at your perfectly reasonable question.

It reminds me of an old joke my father used to say about jobs with virtually no interview (fast food, etc). He called it "The Mirror Test", as in if you hold a mirror up to the person, does it fog up? If yes, you are hired!

> Where will they be qualified to work?

Going by a certain story 2 years ago, their concern should be that they're overqualified for Meta.

It doesn't help that gmail, which is the only serious direct competition to outlook, straight up doesn't do "folders" and instead goes with markers. So you can't really just put a filter that drags all the 100 low-priority alerts in what would count as a first degree abstraction of "place where things are sorted into". No, there are two layers of abstraction between point A and B of things, sorter and sorted things. The result? Muggles can't recognize the heck you're describing and refuse to even acknowledge the possibility.

I have been using email for as long as email was a thing and I still managed to blackhole important emails with filters not too long ago.

Anywhere. I straight up don’t check my email at work. If people need me they have to teams message me to tell me they emailed me. Don’t have time to sift through all the bullshit generated emails. Jira, GitHub, confluence, servicenow, workday, etc. amounts to an incredible amount of junk I just can’t be bothered with.

Most people who have office jobs don't know how to do this either

> What are they learning?

Are you suggesting that outlook wrangling be explicitly taught at the college level?

Most managers I've met, struggle with setting up email filters, and have to ask tech support to do it for them. These students will be qualified just fine.

I'd hope/assume that any Computer Science students would be able to do this, but most Biology/Education/English/Art students probably couldn't.

I mean, anyone smart enough to attend university could probably figure it out if they really wanted to, but there are hundreds of other useful things that they could learn too. There are only so many hours in the day, and given that most students don't get that many emails, I can hardly blame them for not wanting to prioritize learning how to filter emails.

(I personally have over a hundred lines of Sieve filters, but I'm definitely not a typical student)

Didn't you hear? Chat apps and iMessage (SMS included) is the new email.

Delete

Delete and Report Spam

In my experience, it’s hard enough to make students check their school email in the first place. Let alone filter it.

>Setting up custom email filters is beyond the capabilities of most students?

Yes. And most of the general population. They can do it once they know it exists, most people just are not aware it is a thing at all.

>What are they learning?

Here, their "major" as you say in the US. Someone in econ, biology or even CS is not going to learn Outlook rules. Maybe IT or business will have a sentence on it.

>Where will they be qualified to work?

Any office job. Any job really.

it's MS software, i think it's inanely difficult

> What are they learning?

Exactly what is in their field of study, nothing more. That's a huge part of the problems created by treating academia as a degree mill mandatory to get a job able to feed yourself instead of a place only for those truly interested in actually studying a subject.